August 23, 2011

Its time for another edition of Blogging Marathon, which is the brain child of Srivalli. The theme I have chosen for this week is cooking with five or less ingredients. I thought this will be interesting to showcase recipes with few ingredients, yet very tasty. Hope you all enjoy this series along with me.

During Vishu, I managed to get a small piece of jack fruit to keep for the Vishu Kani. For the same price, I could get two big fruits at Palakkad. Before buying, husband confirmed if he should buy for that price. And since it was for the kani, I did not want to compromise. Once I cleaned, all I could get was around 10 fruit bulbs from it. I asked my husband's suggestion as to what should I make with that. He gave a simple and easy one - just eat it as it is. I had toyed with various options of making a chakka curry or payasam or ela adai. The images of ela adai made me salivate and I decided its ela adai. I set out to make the filling and then I realized that I don't have the elai/banana leaf at home. And its not easily available near my home. Its then this kozhakkattai/modakam idea clicked and I set out to make it. I got around 8 nos with the filling I had and was happy with the result. I did not measure any ingredients, just added on the go. So what I give is an approximate measurement.

You need

For the filling

Ripe jack fruit bulbs - 10 nos

Powdered jaggery - 1/2 cup

Grated coconut - 1/4 cup

For the outer cover

Rice flour - 1 cup

Salt - a pinch, oil - 1 tspn, water - 1 cup

Method

Chop the jack fruit into bite sized pieces. Take jaggery with a tablespoon of water in a kadai. When the jaggery melts completely, add the jack fruit pieces and grated coconut. The moisture from the fruit and coconut will make the mixture more watery. Continue cooking till the mixture comes together. Don't cook too long that it becomes hard. It should be soft and moist.

In another kadai, take 1 cup of water with a teaspoon of oil and a pinch of salt. Bring it to boil. Slowly add the rice flour and mix well. Cook till the mixture becomes dry and is well cooked. Remove it to a plate and leave to cool. Knead the dough to make it smooth.

Pinch a lemon sized ball from the dough and flatten it to a small disc. Keep a tablespoon of the filling in the center.

Gather the edges of the dough and seal it at the top.

Prepare modaks the same with the rest of the dough and filling. Steam them for 10 minutes in a pressure cooker or a steamer. You can check if it is done from its appearance. It must have turned to a pale white with a shiny appearance. Enjoy while it is warm.

Do drop in at the Blogging Marathon page, to check out what my friends have cooked for the day.

wow...this is simply superb....i never every heard of this kind of sweet.....my granny use to prepare this kind of sweet with only coconut and jaggary filling...this is completly new for me.....very nice..book marked.

This one is so different and looks so inviting, you know what I have bought a tin of Jackfruit, I wanted to try out your chakka pradamar :), I think I will go for this instead and next time will try to find if I can get an other tin somewhere here!